STADIUM GRIDLOCK IN L.A. MEANS NO REASON FOR BOLTS TO JUMP ON I-5

The Department of Home Team Security has issued a new advisory, downgrading the danger of Los Angeles stealing the Chargers from Low to Laughable.

Since the only levels below that are April Fools’, What Have You Been Smoking? and May We Live That Long, Bolts fans ought to be able to find comfort in the absence of an imminent threat to filch their football team. For the moment, at least, they have nothing to fear except fear itself and, perhaps, Peyton Manning.

Word that the National Football League remains at an impasse with Anschutz Entertainment Group over the financial structure of its stadium proposal for downtown L.A. is unsurprising but not unwelcome. It signals continuing gridiron gridlock in the city most conspicuously lacking America’s most popular reality programming and, as a consequence, diminished urgency everywhere else.

Next to tangible traction on the local scene, prolonged inertia in L.A. is San Diego’s best-case scenario. It doesn’t make Qualcomm Stadium any more modern or make the Chargers any more content with staying there, but it buys valuable time and, at least theoretically, bolsters this city’s bargaining position.

If there’s a gun to San Diego’s head right now, it’s a squirt gun. If there’s a deal to be made in L.A., it does not yet conform to the NFL’s requirement of unconditional surrender. If there’s anything we’ve learned after a decade of elaborate posturing and pricey consultants, it is that getting a football stadium built in Southern California carries a degree of difficulty similar to sticking a brick in a blender and extracting a smoothie.

Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports reported Thursday night that AEG’s terms for an NFL team at its proposed Farmers Field remain unchanged and are therefore unpalatable. Three months after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell met with AEG’s Phil Anschutz, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in Denver, the status quo remains stalemate.

AEG is still scheduled to release its 10,000-page environmental impact report next week — presumably from a forklift — but its appearance of momentum is no more. For all of its orchestrated hype, from glitzy graphics to overproduced announcements of incremental progress to a pre-construction naming rights deal for a stadium that may not get built, Farmers Field still has a hard row to hoe.

No existing team is going to commit to Los Angeles without being certain that a new stadium will be built, and the hurdles have only grown higher as construction costs have soared past the $1 billion mark for the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and the new shared home of the New York Giants and Jets. Though the NFL has a keen interest in reclaiming the nation’s No. 2 market, it has been unwilling to return to L.A. on AEG’s terms — to have one of its teams operate as a tenant for another private enterprise that would presume to control its revenue streams.

“They’re talking about basically requiring the teams to pay the vast majority of stadium costs through a combination of equity and rent,” said stadium analyst Neil deMause, author of Field Of Schemes. “If the Chargers wanted to build a stadium on their own dime, they could do it in San Diego.”

The NFL plainly prefers AEG’s downtown site to Ed Roski’s undeveloped acreage in the cachet-challenged City of Industry, but it is also bedazzled by the potential of Dodger Stadium and the bountiful parking and development possibilities in Chavez Ravine.

“We’ve often said that’s an extraordinary stadium site up at Dodger Stadium,” Goodell told reporters Monday at league meetings in Florida, “and it’s something we were interested in going back to the 1990s.”

If that poses a threat on the Chargers’ front, it would not appear to be an immediate threat. Before Magic Johnson & Co. can contemplate a partnership with the NFL, they need to complete their $2 billion acquisition of the Dodgers and then rebuild that battered brand. They need to keep their eye on the ball with the red stitches.

Eventually, the Department of Home Team Security may perceive a more palpable and pressing problem and authorize a red alert. Yet while San Diego can ill-afford to craft a stadium strategy contingent on a permanent logjam in L.A., getting a billion-dollar stadium off the ground anywhere is a formidable feat.

“I think everyone’s going to sit tight and regroup and the Chargers, the (Minnesota) Vikings and everyone else will keep plugging away until they find some combination that works,” deMause said. “It’s not about sites. It’s about the fact that you’re basically talking about a billion dollars and a billion dollars doesn’t grow on trees.”

Not even in Los Angeles.

“Every year I always expect this is not going to be the year,” deMause said. “So much has to fall into place for a stadium deal to happen. But sometimes they do happen. It could be next year. It could be 10 years from now.”